LONDON, November 12, 2006 –
Russian gay activist Nikolai Alekseev has vowed to fight on after Moscow
Pride 2006 was officially banned by Moscow’s mayor and the resulting protest
was disrupted.

A lawyer who lives and works in
Moscow, Alekseev is the founder and head of Project Gay Russia and the
executive secretary of the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO).

He has been actively challenging
homophobia in Russia for the last four years and took a leading role in the
planning of Moscow Pride. He has also has been very active in campaigns in
other Eastern European countries, notably Latvia.

The Gay and Lesbian Humanist
Association (GALHA) flew him in from Moscow to speak at its public meeting
concerning homophobia in Eastern Europe on Friday and for its annual lunch
as guest-of-honour and keynote speaker on the following day.

At the meeting which was held at
London’s Conway Hall, he was joined on the panel of speakers by journalist
Andy Harley, GALHA’s Derek Lennard who is also the UK co-ordinator for the
International Day Against Homophobia, and Peter Tatchell of OutRage! They
all attended Moscow Pride last May. Jason Pollock, the executive director
of Pride London was also on the panel.

In a moving speech to his audience
at the GALHA lunch, which was held at Chez Gerard in London’s Southbank on
Saturday, Mr. Alekseev described the hostility which participants in Moscow
Pride 2006 had to face from a coalition of fascist thugs and Orthodox
Christian religionsts.

He said they had been “bloodied but
unbowed” and would certainly be back with a vengeance in 2007. Given time,
he predicted, the situation for LGBT people in Russia would be as favourable
as it is now in Western European countries.

His speech was received with an
ecstatic ovation and he was presented with an award by GALHA’s acting chair
Andrew Copson in recognition of “his courage in challenging homophobia in
Russia and beyond”.

Mr. Copson described Nikolai
Alekseev as “a very courageous man”, while Mr. Lennard commented that “we
don’t need lessons in morality from the Mayor of Moscow and his cronies”.